"Canonical's Ubuntu 6.06 LTS is an excellent Linux-based operating system - so excellent, in fact, that it not only earned eWEEK Labs' Analyst's Choice designation but has also become our clear favorite among Linux desktop distributions. This latest Ubuntu release, which became available in June, has won our ardor with a tight focus on desktop usability; an extremely active, helpful and organized user community; and a software installation and management framework that's unsurpassed on any OS platform."

My thoughts exactly. IHMO, all of the most recent mainstream Linux distributions are incredibly excellent. When I started using Linux (Red Hat 6.2), I couldn't even imagine that they'd ever get this good. The free software movement has fought a hardware industry that's largely unwilling to cooperate and the restrictive licensing of proprietary software vendors. In spite of these obstables, they've still been able to achieve the vast majority of that smooth, polished experience that I thought would be plain impossible to achieve.

There's still major obstacles to Linux-based operating systems becoming accepted and supported by the computer industry at large. However, with every hurdle that the free software community overcomes, it becomes that much easier for the industry to meet us by knocking some down from their side. With the quality, breadth, and value offered by distributions like Ubuntu, it must be getting hard for some in the industry to answer the question, "Why not?"